THT: Anatomy of a player: Hiroki Kuroda

Unlike other Japanese imports, Kuroda doesn’t seem to pitch backwards much. Many pitchers from Japan like to throw off-speed pitches in fastball counts and fastballs in off-speed counts, but Kuroda prefers his fastball on the first pitch and when he falls behind. He throws either his four-seamer or sinker more than 70 percent of the time 1-0, 2-0, 2-1 and 3-1. This may be a testament to his belief in his fastball, which is a very solid pitch with plus velocity. This conventional style of pitching may be the reason he didn’t see a spike in his walk rates this year. If so, this could be an important indicator of future success of other Japanese pitchers.

Kuroda’s best off-speed pitch is his splitter. It acts like a change-up, and Kuroda uses it more to left-handed batters, as you would expect. That said, the pitch mechanically works the opposite of a straight change-up. Generally, a straight change-up is thrown with the same spin as a fastball, but around 10 mph slower. The hitter is fooled because he sees the same spin, thinks fastball, and swings way too early for a ball thrown much more slowly. The “drop” you see from the straight change is produced by gravity, not the spin of the ball. Because the the ball is thrown more slowly, it is in the air long and gravity has more time to work its magic.

Kuroda’s splitter produces the downward movement with spin and not gravity. Kuroda throws his splitter at about 88 mph, so it is in the air for a shorter time than an 83 mph change-up would be. The downward movement comes from the spin and you can see the difference in vertical movement compared to his fastball. For comparison look at Tom Glavine’s straight change. So here the batter sees a velocity that matches up with a fastball velocity but still swings over the pitch because of the lesser vertical movement. This will be an important pitch for Kuroda going against the Phillies in the NLCS, so keep an eye out for it.